Potty Training 2.0

I haven't gone back through the blog to see if I detailed how we potty-trained Baby 1.0. As I remember, eventually we just sucked up a couple days to a week of accidents until he understood the sensations and could get himself to the toilet. We realized after the fact didn't need pull-ups or a little potty seat or any of that; we needed a portable kid-sized seat and a lot of pairs of underpants and shorts with elastic waists.

But what I didn't realize is that Baby 1.0 has always had a fundamental dislike of wet pants, at one point within the first week of life culminating in three diaper changes within five minutes, much to the consternation and shock of his father.

They tell you when you have Baby 2.0 that Baby 2.0 will be completely different than Baby 1.0. And it's mostly true, or at least it seems like it when I try to do whatever we did with Baby 1.0 and Baby 2.0 has a complete meltdown.

Or in the case of potty-training, complete indifference. A would have hated to sit in wet pants. L would happily sit in wet pants for hours. He would sit in wet pants until they dried out again. He did not care. Bribes of new underpants or being like his big brother, who hung the moon? Nope. Stickers or checkmarks on the hand? Promises of toys in the future? Fierce celebration every time something was successfully landed? Nope. "I need my privacy," L told me. And then took out all the bath toys, and peed on them and the floor.

A lack of motivation equals a lack of potty training. And one day, folks, I decided I was done. L is going to start preschool in July and he needs to be potty trained by then and I was totally over diapers. Completely. I felt like I needed a half a Valium and a rye-and-coke every time we approached the diaper changing station.

The day I was completely over diapers, a classmate of A's had a baby sister born. So this is what I told L: "Buffy has a new baby sister. And that new baby sister needs diapers. For every new baby born, someone else has to stop using diapers, and this time, it's you. So when the current box of diapers runs out, you're out, so it's time to start using underpants."

"We can just get another [box of diapers]," L offered. "At Target."

"Nope," I said. "We're not allowed to buy any more diapers. The people at Target will throw us out if we try."

Then I offered him bribes: an episode of a TV series for peeing successfully, a movie for pooping. One laundry-intense weekend later, he mostly had it. It's been a few weeks now and I can say, pretty confidently, that he's got it. Dry at night, dry in the morning, dry during the day. He got sick and accidents happened, but they do when he took unexpected, unanticipated, long-lasting naps.

So we're potty trained, and all it took was my imagining an elaborate nationwide conspiracy to maintain the diaper sale status quo. He'll have a future in talking-head news.